Removing caves etc for consistent medication efficacy

[xinguinsis]

Just had a white spot outbreak and I noticed a pronounced correlation between time spent by fish cave dwelling and infestation intensity. Makes sense that fish will have heightened rates of reinfestation and there will be less active medication interaction.Haven't read this in books that I can remember and it's just an observation but it might be worth being mindful of next time you medicate.

[Likoma]

Thats a pretty interesting observation.

Is it a planted tank? is there a lot of movement in the water column? The caves are they enclosed? or open ended?

What size is the tank?

Please excuse all the questions.

[noxious_nasties]

As the science sayings go, correlation does not always equal causation...

Not to put you off, but I could hypothesise that the reason why the fish is in the dwelling

is because it has not recovered and wants shelter/peace rather than not receiving the medication.

If you were sick would you go out an excercise or would you prefer to stay in bed?

One of the reasons they don't allow medications like antibiotics in water is because of the medication impacting

on other biota within the water causing heightened levels of resistance amoung many oranisms/bacteria. If the

medication is in liquid form, the whole tank should be set at the concentration/dose you put the medication at -

therefore the impact of the fish sheltering or not would probably be negligible. Of course the impact of the medication

will vary depending on what form it is in, but I would think the sheltering is more-so because the fish has not

fully recovered and is still battling against whatever it got hit with. That's not to say a particular parasitic organism

will attack harder if a fish is stationary though.

Cheers,

John